That thing called Quarter-life Crisis

Why do they even call it that when Wikipedia defines it as “a period of life usually ranging from the late teens to the early thirties“? obviously I’ve reached that point years ago. You doubt your life due to the stress of becoming an adult, but what do you feel stressed about?

Is it when your friends are talking about their investments and insurance then realise your net assets are zero because other than cash, the rest have already reached the end of their useful life (ie no value!). How about that night before your flight abroad to work away from family and old friends and the life you’ve been living for the past 24 years. Or maybe when your Facebook feed is full of marriage proposals and you just like sit there scrolling through while listening to Ed Sheeran sing Don’t. Well I say Don’t.

To children, the world and everything in it is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course.

I miss those times when my only problem was how to ride the bike, how to keep my grades barely alive and make sure I still have allowance for a month (but at the back of my mind I’ll always know that I can always ask my parents for more). I want to just watch anime in the afternoon then go out to play. Even the times when we stay late in school doing org activities which when I think about it made up more than half of my college life (and I don’t regret a bit to be honest). I think my crisis is that I struggle to keep my inner-kid alive and kicking but the journey to adulthood will tell you that there are more important things in life than your bank account and the stock exchange, and there’s always adventure in taking that first flight away from home living in a place you’ve never even heard of before, of knowing that you still have time to make yourself whole until that person will finally ask you the big question. I would like to be an adult who does not accept the world as a matter of course. I want to grow up liking Spongebob and colouring books and enjoy watching Adventure Time and that would not make me a kid, but it would make me smile and sane amidst the growing pressure of adulthood. No, I’m not telling you to just watch cartoons everyday and play pick-up-sticks every weekend but who turns to Nasdaq for a pick-me-upper?

I would like to stay as a kid, happy with the small things in life and as an adult, happy with the small things that really matter.

I’ve always wanted to write a book, travel the world, learn at least 3 different languages, play the guitar, play the piano, the violin, see a real-life penguin and an aurora borealis. As a kid you dream a lot of things, make a bucket list or even collect all the top-places-to-visit-before-you-die-type articles in Facebook then later you realise where have the years gone by. The crisis there my friend, is that you let those years pass by without doing anything about it.

I will always have this crisis, of not being able to do anything about it. I will commit the sin of accepting the world as a matter of course and will choose to stay inside my comfort zone for who knows how long. But every time I do, maybe I have to watch Spongebob Squarepants and I’ll know what to do.